Sunday Musings: Space Hulk/Gallowdark and abandoning an ancient empire.

 I had the past week off. Which meant that what little energy Long Covid allows me has gone towards my hobby instead of my job. I've also been looking at/seeing things and musing.

What did that musing lead to?  I think I'm done being an active Games Workshop Customer.

Let's preface this with some background and then the causes that led to this conclusion.

I've been a GW\40K fan for my entire adult life. I discovered them around 18 years of age, during second edition. Since then I've bought EVERY edition of 40K starter, and have collected a large portion of the 1st edition books too. Several editions, I didn't even get to play a game in, due to gaming groups drifting apart. But I still kept up, because Warhammer/40K was my main "thing". Even if it was never exclusively so, I do play other games and settings. I have many of the secondary/Fanatic games, and love them dearly, especially Battlefleet Gothic, Necromunda and Space Hulk (Kill team combining these two in Gallowdark was a stroke of genius which is mainly responsible for this only coming now, and not several months sooner, tbh). The shared love of the games and setting has given me the vast majority of people I now call friends, both online and in "meatspace".  The 41st Millennium runs deep with me.

So what prompted this disentanglement from the company that produces it? In no particular order:

-While never a cheap hobby, the game has become downright unaffordable over the past years. The Hobby™ has never been cheap, but the past and upcoming price hike have, for me, broken the limit of value for money.

-GW's relentless release pace means you don't have the time to enjoy new mini's or spend time with a release to get to know it's ins and outs. It's all so rushed and stressful. It's exhausting. 

-And many of the newer releases, despite being of high technical and sculpting skill, aren't very good, lore and design-wise. There's nothing joyous or inspired about them.

-Despite its grand  "Warhammer is for Everyone" statement a while back, I've not seen GW make any significant progress or effort to deal with the obvious bigot issue in their community. They're still here, and with the lack of significant push out since that statement, they're louder and more obnoxious than ever.

-GW's reliance on FOMO and flash in the pan sales and their accompanying consistent unwillingness and inability to get their product in the hands of fans instead of scalpers. It just shows such disrespect and disinterest to their customer/fanbase.

-GW's exploitative lack of respect for their artists and creators. It started years ago, with the removal of author credits on rules, artists watermarks and credits, and now after building loyalty and community through popular faces on their tutorials, they've reverted to literally faceless narration. The only ones allowed a name and face are the presenters, the one who are effectively doing a constant, barely masked sales pitch.

GW has always been a somewhat out of touch and regressive company, but they seemed to be doing better for a while. Not it just feels like their regressing to their worst habits. I just can't find any joy in THEIR version of The Hobby™ anymore.

Sum total: I don't NEED Games Workshop anymore for my hobbying in the 40K setting, and I don't like them near enough anymore to give them a default claim on my hobby budget.

Does that mean GW won't lure me back in at some point? No, if they manage to hit the perfect note with a release (Say, BFG 2nd ed or Warhammer Old World Man O'War?), I might pick that up. But I won't be a devotee anymore, just a passer by.

Keeping my games/collections up to date and assuming something is a must buy, because it's for a game or faction I collect? That's past. The only remaining guaranteed buy left is the fourth installment of Kill Team Gallowdark. Because I WANT to have it, not because I NEED it to stay current. Unless a miracle happens, 9th will be the last edition of 40K I own.

I won't sell my collections either, as I still like the setting and minis. But I'll be playing around in the universe at my pace, on my conditions, in a part of the timeline I choose, an the version of the rules I like without regard to GW's  plans or desires. MY hobby, not The Hobby™.

Anyway, after all that dour thought, let's end on something fun, shall we?

I finished painting the first/test portion of my Gallowdark terrain. These are 3d printed fanmade iterations and meant as a testcase for painting techniques, colour schemes and new materials/paints to try. (Dirty Down Rust prime among them).  They'll also mean I can fill a larger table for when we play a Badab War Kill Team campaign later this year.   You see, for this year, I want to try and focus on playing more, instead of just buying more. Let's hope I succeed!

My Void Crows scavenger team got a bit more than they bargained for inside a derelict ship!

 

 Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it?

Lots of stuff happened, I lost the heart to hobby and blog for a bit after the events of last post. I did pick hobbying back, but not yet keeping up with this blog. Especially as I got Covid last September. Which turned out to be Long Covid... Added to that discovering I have diabetes (possibly triggered/exacerbated by the covid infection) and getting the flu on top of that all, resetting my recovery back to zero in december.

Anyhow, enough moping, let's see what I've been up to in the intervening months. Not gonna say much, just dump pictures.

April 2022

May 2022

June 2022

A commission for a friend.

July 2022

August  2022

September & October 2022

'Rona....

November 2022

December 2022

In December, I also pitched a Traveller RPG one-off to my friends, that may, if all like it, become a campaign.

And I (re)discovered Battletech!

January 2023

And that's us all caught up.

The 28mm scale Warhammer mech still needs basing, once that is done, I'll take some glamour shots of the beast. He'll be accompanied by a Locust and maybe some infantry, for large scale skirmish level games and/or mech on mech duels.  I still need to decide what the OpFor will be...

Anxiety, heartbreak and some housekeeping.

Sigh.  Some things have happened. Let me explain:

Just over a year ago, I made a fan 3d sculpt of a mecha from Dream Pod 9's Gear Krieg. It was modeled from scratch, by me, in Fusion 360. I also made an optional arm set and a weapon set for it. All in 1/56 aka 28mm scale. Something which hasn't been available since Company B ceded the license for resin models in that scale. I put them up on Cults3D, free of charge, as I was happy with what I had created and to maybe help out some other people who were looking for this kind of vehicle in that particular scale. I was utterly clear that this was a fan interpretation of an existing design in a different scale and no profit or ownership was claimed or intended by me.

Yesterday, I suddenly got a very aggressive and insulting comment on Cults, from someone I had never interacted with before, basically accusing me of stealing Dream Pod 9s 3d models. Some internet tough guy having a bad day, I assumed.  However, within the hour two of the three files I mentioned above were removed. After contacting Cults3D about this, I found out that this was the result of the CEO of Dream Pod 9 sending a pair of very overreaching and aggressively worded DMCAs basically demanding, under threat of litigation, from Cults3D to not only absolutely destroy any ability for me to ever again share my creations there, regardless of if they were even related to Dream Pod 9 IP. But they also demanded from Cults3D, again under threat of litigation, to dox me and hand my personal data over to Dream Pod 9. 

I successfully refuted the DMCA claim, proving that my files had been released 6 months before Dream Pod 9 even first announced any digital releases in 28mm scale, and notifying them of tone and demeanor of the initial contact by the DMCA claimant. Cults3D reinstated my files to their site. To prevent further escalation/harassment, I scrubbed the weapons pack, all original designs by me, of anything that could reference DP9 IP. The file with the manipulator arms, I left down permanently. As a safeguard and to conserve evidence/reference should I need it, I kept up the file with the mecha design itself (Oddly the one which they didn't DMCA??), but devoid of the print files, and with a short explanation of why it was still up.

After which, the sender of the original message chose to further harass and accuse me. 

If they had just contacted me openly and politely, if the sender of the first message had properly identified himself as an associate of the company, we could have entered into a dialogue and found an amiable agreement. Instead Dream Pod 9 decided to accost me from a position of anonymity and then immediately go for the nuclear option.

What makes it even more painful for me, is that this was the first more complex, multipart 3d model I was sufficiently satisfied with, and proud of,  to share online, for others to see and use. It was, to me, my debut as a "serious" 3d modeler. And they trampled all over that.

This all has utterly cured me of a 20+ year love of the Gear Krieg setting and designs as well as any respect I had for the company. 

So I'll be removing what references to Gear Krieg or Dream Pod 9 have/can find on this blog. 

I've done some other hobby things in the past weeks, which I may share in a future post. But for now, I'm out of hobby or online posting mojo for a bit. 

I hope you understand.

Till next time!

Wow, time has flown....

Several months of catching up to do... Prepare for a deluge of images!

I did some Fallout stuff: 

After a while, interest waned, and I started on some Crimson Skies stuff, namely, printing off some planes I found, and then 3d modeling and printing engine nacelles and broadside bays for my zeppelins (Which I will have to redo, as I dropped them before primering and I'm still waiting for the heartbreak to subside enough to work on them again...)

Having gotten some practice in with Fusion360 again, I settled into another project: making System Ships for Battlefleet Gothic: 

They are TINY! That's a 32mm base it's next to:

And since I was making these anyway, I might as well start printing stuff for BFG again:

Including ordnance (SO FIDDLY!)

As well as some large scale fun:

My friends and me also got a period of renewed interest in cyberpunk, resulting in this: 

We planned to each have one of these appartments printed, so we could paint it, and have a basis for a city board. Due to some issues with the filament printer, the last two still need to be printed. I'm currently ironing out and re-tuning after replacing the entire hot end...

I also finally figured out how I could do the banners on my Reaver, so that project is moving forward again as well (once more, waiting on troubleshooting the filament printer)...

Since I had a week off, and was in a holding pattern regarding 3d printing, I finally got to painting some stuff: 

The fruits of a week of painting, I got a LOT done!

Some close ups of the large (1/10.000 scale) BFG escorts:

And that brings us up to this month.

I'm working on the dismounted crew for my Titans:

And I stayed with the BFG theme:

I also fired up Fusion360 again, and got to work designing an Orbital Dock:

This model, along with my System Ships, are up on my Cults3D page. 

Now that is done, I'm working on a set of Orbital Defence Platforms, again, in the extra-gothic style:

Test prints are currently running, once these print satisfactorily, they'll go up on Cults3D as well.

Thanks for your patience, both in waiting for this post, and in viewing it!

See you next time!